{"id":48824,"date":"2014-10-20T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=48824"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:38","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:38","slug":"blowing-the-whistle-on-cia-torture-from-beyond-the-grave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/blowing-the-whistle-on-cia-torture-from-beyond-the-grave\/","title":{"rendered":"Blowing the Whistle on CIA Torture from Beyond the Grave"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"guantanamo-article-display-b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

17 Oct 2014 – <\/em>In the fall of 2006, Nathaniel Raymond, a researcher with the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights, got a call from a man professing to be a CIA contractor. Scott Gerwehr was a behavioral science researcher who specialized in \u201cdeception detection,\u201d or figuring out when someone was lying.\u00a0 Gerwehr told Raymond \u201cpractically in the first five minutes\u201d that he had been at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo in the summer of 2006, but had left after his suggestion to install video-recording equipment in detainee interrogation rooms was rejected. \u201cHe said, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t operate at a facility that didn\u2019t tape. It protects the interrogators and it protects the detainees,\u2019\u201d Raymond recalls.<\/p>\n

Gerwehr also told Raymond that that he had read the CIA inspector general\u2019s report<\/a> on detainee abuse, which at the time had not been made public. But \u201che didn\u2019t behave like a traditional white knight,\u201d Raymond told The Intercept.<\/em> Though he had reached out to Raymond and perhaps others, he didn\u2019t seem like a prototypical whistleblower. He didn\u2019t say what he was trying to do or ask for help; he just dropped the information. Raymond put him in touch with a handful of reporters, and their contact ended in 2007.<\/p>\n

In 2008, at the age of 40, Gerwehr died in a motorcycle accident on Sunset Boulevard. Years after Gerwehr died, New York Times<\/em> reporter\u00a0James Risen obtained a cache of Gerwehr\u2019s files, including emails that identify him as part of a group of psychologists and researchers with close ties to the national security establishment. Risen\u2019s new book, Pay Any Price<\/em>, uses Gerwehr\u2019s emails to show close collaboration between staffers at the American Psychological Association (APA) and government officials, collaboration that offered a fig leaf of health-professional legitimacy to the CIA and military\u2019s brutal interrogations of terror suspects.<\/p>\n

Risen describes Gerwehr as \u201cliving a highly compartmentalized life.\u201d A Santa Monica liberal who \u201cexpressed distaste for George Bush,\u201d he was nonetheless tightly connected to people involved in the administration\u2019s interrogation program. He had top secret\/sensitive compartmented information clearance, according to Risen, and a psychologist told Risen \u201che seemed optimistic about the possibilities of testing out psychological theories on interrogation issues.\u201d Indeed, in a 2005 New York Times <\/em>op-ed<\/a> that reads as almost na\u00efve in the wake of the Abu Ghraib revelations, he and a co-author wrote that the idea \u201cthat harsh treatment of prisoners can be less effective than showing compassion\u2026now deserves a test in Iraq.\u201d Treating prisoners well \u201cwould help reverse the terrible propaganda defeat suffered with the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib,\u201d he wrote, and \u201cprisoners released by our forces would return to their communities with stories of American generosity and tolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Scott<\/a>

Scott Gerwehr
Photo: Paolo Pellegrin Magnum Photos<\/p><\/div>\n

Risen says that Gerwehr\u2019s files don\u2019t contain \u201cexplosive bombshells,\u201d or indicate \u201cthe extent of his knowledge of the CIA\u2019s detention and interrogation programs.\u201d But they narrate a period in 2004 and 2005 when the APA was being forced to respond to revelations about detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and the role of psychologists in designing and condoning brutal questioning tactics. (Subsequent government<\/a> investigations<\/a> and reporting<\/a> would show<\/a> the foundational role<\/a> of psychology, and in particular, two psychologists and CIA contractors, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.)<\/p>\n

The APA in 2002 famously revised its ethics code\u00a0to permit\u00a0a psychologist to follow \u201cgoverning legal authority\u201d even if it clashed with the APA\u2019s own code of ethics. It was, essentially, the Nuremberg Defense of \u201cjust following orders.\u201d (In 2010 the APA definitively disavowed it<\/a>.) As Risen writes, the 2002 change allowed psychologists to be involved in CIA and military interrogations, and \u201chelped the lawyers in the Justice Department to argue that the enhanced interrogation program was legal because health professionals were monitoring the interrogations to make sure they stayed within the limits established by the Bush administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2005, after the revelations of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, the APA put together a task force on ethics and national security, which, while affirming the organization\u2019s opposition to torture, determined<\/a> that psychologists could be involved with interrogations \u201cto assist in ensuring that such processes are safe and ethical for all participants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gerwehr was copied on emails discussing a confidential APA lunch meeting in July 2004, attended by psychologists from the CIA, Department of Defense, and other agencies. (The invited CIA psychologist, Kirk Hubbard, wrote that \u201call the DOD shrinks will be tied up\u2026I will represent both of us.\u201d) The draft proposal creating the task force was circulated to Gerwehr and others invited to the meeting before it was given to APA members. Other members of the task force later complained<\/a> it was stacked in favor of the government, with six of the panel\u2019s ten members having ties to the military or intelligence.<\/p>\n

After the task force recommendation went public in 2005, the APA\u2019s Mumford wrote an email thanking Hubbard for his \u201cpersonal contribution\u2026in getting this effort off the ground,\u201d and mentioned that Susan Brandon, a Bush White House official, had \u201chelped craft some language related to research\u201d for the report. (Hubbard says that \u201cI was not directly involved in the task force itself, though I know it was reported that I provided some input.\u201d\u00a0Brandon is now head of the research unit for the FBI\u2019s high value detainee interrogation group, according to her bio<\/a> for an upcoming conference. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from Brandon. In a statement responding to Risen\u2019s book, the APA said those contacts were \u201cnot in any manner unusual or inappropriate\u201d and allowed \u201cfor frank discussion of the ethical and practice challenges facing psychologists working in national security settings.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Gerwehr\u2019s emails about the APA also caught the interest of the FBI. In 2010, after learning of Gerwehr\u2019s death and believing that he might have had critical information, Raymond sought out a meeting with John Durham, the assistant U.S. attorney who was leading the criminal probe related to CIA detention and interrogation. Durham had also been specifically tasked<\/a> with looking into the CIA\u2019s destruction of interrogation videotapes. (Raymond now directs the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative\u2019s Signal Program on Human Security and Technology<\/a>, which applies satellite imagery analysis and other technical approaches to humanitarian crises. He is mentioned as a researcher for an unnamed human rights group in Risen\u2019s book, but his conversations with Gerwehr and the FBI are being reported for the first time here.)<\/p>\n

Raymond and PHR\u2019s then-Washington director, John Bradshaw, met with Durham at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., in September 2010. Raymond and Bradshaw noted that they weren\u2019t in the visitor logs, and Durham took them up a back elevator to a briefing room, Raymond recalls. Besides talking about Gerwehr, Durham\u2019s team said that they had read PHR\u2019s recent report \u201cExperiments in Torture<\/a>,\u201d which concluded that medical personnel\u2019s involvement in the CIA\u2019s interrogation program constituted illegal medical research and experimentation. Durham\u2019s team seemed \u201cinterested in the broader architecture of the legal heat shield\u201d on torture, Raymond said. In Bradshaw\u2019s recollection, \u201cDurham was not particularly forthcoming in saying that he accepted our conclusions. But they were interested and had read our work.\u201d (Durham did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n

Two years later, Durham\u2019s overall probe ended with no charges. At that point, Raymond reached out to Durham\u2019s office again, to ask if anyone had looked into the information about the APA from Gerwehr\u2019s emails, which Raymond by then\u00a0had access to. Durham directed him to an agent from the FBI\u2019s public corruption unit, who asked for a memo gathering what he had\u2014Gerwehr\u2019s correspondence and additional emails and interview notes from other sources, including former APA and CIA officials\u2014which Raymond believed could amount to evidence of criminal racketeering. In an email, the agent said she had discussed the issue with Durham, and they thought that the alleged criminal activity fell outside a five-year statute of limitation, but would forward information to the FBI\u2019s Washington field office.<\/p>\n

Neither Raymond nor anyone at PHR heard anything more of it, until a law enforcement official confirmed to The Intercept <\/em>that the FBI in Washington received\u00a0material, and \u201cdid review it,\u201d\u00a0but \u201cdid not find any criminal violations, and therefore did not open any investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raymond told The Intercept<\/em> that the FBI\u2019s decision not to investigate was unsurprising, given the overall lack criminal charges related to CIA torture.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response of the U.S. government, given the whole raft of revelations about torture in the post-9\/11 world, has been to deny, and then to use the language that we\u2019re going to move forward, we\u2019re going to move on,\u201d said Widney Brown, director of programs for Physicians for Human Rights. \u201cBut even setting aside the legal concerns, we feel very strongly as a voice for physicians that there\u2019s no compromise on this issue of medical professionals\u2019 involvement in torture. And it\u2019s very clear in Risen\u2019s book that the APA was very involved in discussions with the government on this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0book, Risen suggests that the APA\u2019s close relationship with the government was motivated at least in part by financial concerns, saying the profession was \u201cso eager for CIA and Pentagon contracts that they showed few qualms about getting involved\u201d with interrogation programs.<\/p>\n

The APA, in its statement, said that any suggestion that \u201cthat APA had a financial motivation\u201d to support U.S. detainee policies \u201cis absurd.\u201d The CIA declined to comment on Gerwehr or the allegations raised from his emails.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t confirm that he was at Gitmo when he says he was. But I believe that Gerwehr encountered something deeply disturbing,\u201d said Raymond. \u201cI think that there needs to be a serious and robust federal investigation into Gerwehr\u2019s past in terms of whistleblowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Update: Added comment from Hubbard. October 17th.<\/em><\/p>\n

Email the author: cora.currier@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The APA said that any suggestion \u201cthat APA had a financial motivation\u201d to support U.S. detainee policies \u201cis absurd.\u201d The CIA declined to comment on Gerwehr or the allegations raised from his emails. \u201cI believe that Gerwehr encountered something deeply disturbing,\u201d said Raymond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}